capturing little slices of life.

Category Archives: Uncategorized

In 1979, I could not get into any college because women and minorities went to the front of the line. So I went to technical school.

I have a Spanish surname, and sometimes companies that hire me erase the “white, not Hispanic” on the EOE form and check “Hispanic”, even though I am only 1/4 Hispanic at most.

I was once told by an employment broker that he could place me right now if I would check the Hispanic and Female boxes, but since I didn’t I would have to face the screening.

I am not eligible for women-and-minority owned business loans.

I was advised to put my wife’s name on all my business licenses so I could be more eligible for city, county, and state contracts.

I have never received a job, contract, raise, or bonus because I am white.

I have never been contacted and asked to join a white guys club, or advised to do something to help out the white race.

I don’t hang with nor do I know anyone who ever thinks about how to suppress other races. In general, the white guys I know just want to work hard and better themselves and their families.

I have never owned a slave.

I don’t know anyone who has ever been a slave.

I have done alright for myself, despite the crappy public education that tried to teach me to hate myself and submit for emotional and verbal flogging because of some perceived injustice someone else did generations ago.

So basically, my white privilege has gotten me extra taxes and fewer opportunities all my life.

My income has been stolen and used against my will to prop up policies that seriously harm minorities and women, break down the family, encourage sloth and illegal activity.

When I hear white men being shut down with the phrase, “check your privilege”, I am inclined to laugh. You snowflakes have no standing to say that unless you walk in our shoes. There.

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Broadly speaking, there are 2. Everyone is born with one. Anything more is delusional.

As far as your gender is concerned:

What you present as means nothing.

What you emotionally feel means even less.

Ponies are not and never will be a gender.

No amount of surgery will change your DNA, which is where your gender stems from.

That said:

No one, no matter how delusional, should be harmed because of their crazy.

No one deserves money from anyone who does not buy into their crazy.

No person deserves to be trapped by a tranny, even if it’s a big part of the trannys fantasy. It is cruel to lie to people to gain their affection. Men and women who want biological families do not deserve to be trapped by delusional trannies who pretend they can fulfill that, while they know they can’t.

It’s OK to love trannies and treat them like people. They deserve every bit as much voluntary love as any other person.

Love is voluntary. You can’t beat it out of people against their will, or write laws forcing people to love anyone.

No one deserves to be beat up or killed for their views. This includes:

Trannies

Baptists

Muslims

Democrats

Republicans

Men

Women

Kids

Actors

Trump Supporters

You have the right to believe you are anything you like. You have no right to force your pronouns or delusions on anyone else. If you think this, then I believe I am the God-Emperor of the West. You will address me as “Your Majesty”. Also there will be much genuflecting.

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So Donald Trump issued an executive order calling for enhanced screening of people from the 7 ‘states’ where terrorists are trained. This would have the effect of delaying some people at port-of-entry, unless they are problematic in some way.

There are 57 Muslim states, and only 7 are on the list: the ones that train terrorists. So if you read “Ban On Muslims” somewhere, that was fake news.

ISIS is an offshoot of a religion, not a race, so if you read that this was racism, that was fake news.

The protestors who are raising a stink about this are paid rabble-rousers, so if you read that there is any kind of groundswell, that’s fake news too. These people for the right money would support Florida Orange Juice or chocolate train tracks.

CNN and Buzzfeed, who both ran with fake stories about Donald Trump’s imaginary romp with Russian hookers, have shown gross journalistic incompetence (or perhaps a Pravda-level agitprop status) and join the ranks of fake news sites with 60 minutes, who was caught getting witnesses to change their stories, and even ran the George Bush fake National Guard memos to fit their preconceived narrative.

There are only a few news sources to be trusted anymore, and none of them are in the ranks of what anyone would call the mainstream media.

Of course, if you are a liberal, or SJW Snowflake, and alignment matters more than truth to you, then feel free to construct any world-view you like out of wood, straw, and playing cards. Just be forewarned that it’s all gonna burn in the face of relentless truth.

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I got a new machine, I had to install my go-to apps that I cannot live without.

One is Auslogics Disk Defrag. If you’re still waiting 17 hours for Microsoft defrag, STOP. Auslogics is way better.

HOWEVER.

No Adware, No Spyware, No Toolbars

It’s a quick download, but it takes you to an adware page when done…

…and in the course of the install, pushes Yahoo at you like a pimp.

If you don’t click custom install, you’ll have to reclaim your browsers.

I don’t know what BoostSpeed is, but I know it’s not what I came here for.

I unchecked BoostSpeed, and…

Tricky.

This one threatens to change your homepage to the ancient dinosaur Yahoo, but LOOK CAREFULLY. If you uncheck and click Agree and Install, you still get Yahoo shit installed! CLICK DECLINE!

But the ADWARE is NOT DONE YET!

More Adware?

No, I don’t want yet another “scanner”. It claims in the mouseover that it wants to install BoostSpeed. Uncheck and finish!

The crapware tab.

Now notice the new, integrated crapware tab!

So for a program that boasts No adware, no spyware, no toolbars, The only one we can’t confirm here is the spyware. The rest is a total lie. I’m starting to wonder if there may be spyware as well. I mean they had no regard for the truth on the other 2 points.

Now I know it’s hard to monetize free software. But – and I have always said this – If you’re going to offer something for free, make it free! If you think people might also like some other crap that goes with your program, then offer it on an opt-in (not hidden, tricky opt-out) basis only! If you want to get paid, then tell people they have to pay. But this lying crap has to end. You’re not building up any goodwill with the client base. I know I will never donate to any company that uses bloatware, adware, and/or spyware to monetize its products. Ever.

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As usual for the rebooted Star Trek franchise, ST:B was a fun romp. But the story lacks cohesion. Those of us who remember the original Trek recall that the stories at least tried to be about something other than seeking out and blowing up new civilizations. It’s almost like they saw the roller-coaster ride of Star Wars and decided to ditch their cerebellums and fly fast by the seat of our pants.

The Small Universe Error

This has become a mainstay of Trek movies. I have railed about it before. “We got stuck in a nebula, so we landed on a nearby planet.” That might work if there were rogue planets in nebulae and if nebulae were a couple hundred or thousand miles across. But when you land on such a planet there would be no “sunlight”, save maybe a faint colored glow. There would certainly be no way such a radiation-soaked planet could support the ancient, defunct civilization that had apparently lived there, let alone Kraal and his bunch.

Disposable characters

“Hi, I’m sweet and innocent and needy. Please come rescue me!” So we’re all geared up to think she’s a damsel in distress but as we all know, any damsels you meet in the first act must by the laws of drama turn out to be evil. And she did. And promptly got smooshed by an improbable starship fragment.

“Oh, hey. I am a cute girl with a lobster head. There has never been one of me in Trek before, but just don’t look at me too close”. You get the impression Jim has been intimate with this crewman – or at least flirted with her enough to get her to open up. And by open up, I mean her incredibly unlikely back-of-the-head-fingers, a-la Sarris from Galaxy Quest. Cool and faithful as she is, *poof*, she’s gone.

Antagonist Logic Errors

Ok, now. We have Kraal. A human Mako from ST:Enterprise days. He’s a soldier, so he sees the universe in warrior terms. The universe wants us dead, and humanity is too fat and lazy to kill them back. So if I take out a major peaceful federation settlement, surely that will terrorize all of humanity (maybe even the whole Federation) into becoming what? A warrior race like the Klingons?

But we all know humanity better than that. It would be a tragic terror act for a week, then the news cycle would flip over to the unexpected tribble infestation on Rigel IV.

WTF Errors

So Kraal crashed on Nebula Planet 400 years ago. He somehow got lizard face – maybe he life-sucked some lizard aliens. But what about the throngs of lizard faced cronies around him? Are they his original crew of humans from the crash? So they are all life-suckers now? Not that we need to care, because even with 400+ years of combat experience, 4 starfleet officers and a homeless girl wipe them out en masse.

Ok, Homeless Girl. She was a kid, watching her daddy get vaporized in an escape attempt. She scuttles off to find a crashed starfleet ship and – as a kid – figures out how to reboot the C:/ drive, learn English, invent a cloaking device, stay alive on a planet with no above-ground life or water. Apparently the energizer bunny runs the ship because 400 years later the XBox consoles still work. Also, why bother cloaking the ship from Kraal? IT WAS HIS SHIP! He knows where it is! It’s not like the swarmer bees are going to come in after searching for the tasty little girl and this would happen…

“Uh, boss, you know that starship we crashed in? It’s gone.”

“Wha..?”

“Yeah, it was there yesterday and now… just rocks. We think that little girl who got away might have fixed it and flew off”

Also, if the minions are the old crew of the Franklin, nega-kudos for all the crewmen who didn’t stand up to the captain and decided to spend 400 years luring starships to their deaths.

Then there’s This ship was designed to be built in space, not flown in an atmosphere. Unless you press these 2 buttons: there, and we’re off! And that maneuver where you plunge downward to restart an engine is from one of the Airport movies I think, where forcing enough airflow over the turbines may cause enough spin to restart the engine. Except that this starship was not designed to ever be in an atmosphere!

Oh, and the much larger Enterprise crew – what’s left of them – vastly outnumber the Franklin crew. I guess they killed just enough of them to crew the Franklin without leaving 50 guys standing on the rocks.

I guess the term “artificial gravity” just covers all the illogic of the Deep Space: Yorktown design. Except when Kirk and Kraal are duking it out in the zero-g part, where landing any kind of punch would be physically impossible. Throwing your fist forward would push the rest of your body back.

Oh, and Big, loopy, curvy habitats in a glass ball. Just sayin’. Did anyone else besides me get Futurama flashbacks over this?

Also, the starships seem to be made of some gawd-awful strong stuff, because they can slice off the side of a cliff at the cost of some broken windows and hull scratches. If you tried that in the space shuttle, you’d be toast. So big, heavy-metal starships would require enormous amounts of energy to move around, but I guess “antimatter reactor” just covers all that engineering nonsense.

Oh, yeah and somehow Kraal is angry about being left for dead on Nebula Planet, but he has a fleet of swarm ships, subspace contact with Yorktown, and Jim’s band of refugees fixed his old ship in an afternoon!

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The detective pulled into the lower-middle class neighborhood, and rounded the corner. His shiny black car looked a little out of place among sea of SUVs that studded the curb.

Junior – his fresh, green partner – newly assigned out of the academy a week ago, was busily writing every annoying nonsensical detail in his PDA. When the detective stopped the car and was unbolting, he caught something on the screen about a “burnt orange sunset”. Just the kind of nonsense they teach the rookies to jot down. Rookies!

They extracted the car and stood on the sidewalk a second. Junior took a couple of steps up the crunchy lawn, and stopped when he noticed the detective wasn’t walking, he was noticing things. That’s what he did. And any junior police detective that didn’t want to learn this was not going to last. So Junior stopped and looked around, trying to guess what was so interesting about this unkempt middle-class home.

“Look at this, junior. The lawn is wet, but brown and crunchy. It’s like he hasn’t watered all summer, then today he did.”

“Sure enough. I wonder why today.”

“Look at that TV antenna. It’s the only house that has one But it’s leaning over and pointing down and east.”

“What do you suppose that means?” Junior stared at the antenna cluelessly.

“A lot Junior. First, that antenna has slipped it’s mooring, so that mast is digging a hole in the roofing. Next, the reception has to suck on that thing, but he hasn’t gone up to fix it.”

“Maybe he has satellite.”

“Nope, no dish”

“Cable?”

“Maybe, but I don’t see it. Let’s go in.”

“What does it all mean, Boss?”

The detective stopped a few feet short of the door. He looked at Junior like he was expecting him to figure it out on his own. There was a pregnant pause. It was octuplets.

“It means that this guy had given up. He saw no reason to keep up appearances, to maintain his world, to go on living. He’s still alive but his world is dead. This guy has lost all hope.”

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Hopelessness never benefits from trite cliches and bumper-sticker psychology.

If you truly cared, you’d take the time to help. Spewing cliches is just tossing the hopelessness back in the other person’s face. It doesn’t help them, it helps you. It’s just a way to exonerate you from helping any further. It would be more helpful to be honest, and tell the person you don’t care enough to help.

Sorry, I only see you once in a while at church: I don’t really want to take the time out of my stuff to listen to you today.

Honestly, I can’t stand it when I see you because every time I ask “how’s it going”, you actually tell me. All I really want to hear is “good” or “fine”.

You see, that kind of honesty may seem brutal, but I contend that it is a win-win because

you are not leading a hurting person into a false impression that someone cares,

and because they will learn not to bother you with stuff you don’t really care about.

Also, no one in this Earth has the bandwidth to really, really care about more than say 5 people. Most only care about themselves. The lucky ones have someone who cares about them.

I imagine that people who have a caring friend don’t experience a lot of hopelessness. It stands to reason that this kind of real relationship would stave the isolation and sorrow off – if not all the time, then most of it. I think that this kind of mutual nurture is rare. We are a very individualistic species after all.

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Economy

The primary thing this economy needs is freedom. Freedom from overtaxation and overregulation. Freedom from government meddling. Here are the highlights of my plan.

Flat tax. 9% of your paycheck.

No Deductions. Stop using tax code to influence people’s behavior

No Child deductions. If children are a good thing, the tax code should not influence people who are on the fence about it.

No Mortgage deductions. If you can not afford a mortgage without help, don’t get one.

Everyone can skip one year in 10 and not pay any taxes

No more death tax.

No more Corporate tax.

No more capital gains tax. You took the risk. You deserve the rewards.

No more minimum wage. You are free to enter into any financial arrangement with your boss that works for you.

No more government worker unions. The government has no skin in the game like a company does, and there is no impetus to keep costs down in negotiations.

No more bailouts. If you’re too big and failing, file for bankruptcy. Like the rest of us.

No more TARP. That’s just seizing money from wise people who paid their bills and didn’t get in over their heads, so you can give it to stupid or deceitful people who made all the wrong choices.

Roll back and phase out all socialist safety net programs that redistribute earnings from the working to the lazy. These programs feign compassion by assuming that Americans will not rise to the aid of the needy unless we take it from them by force. If you don’t think tax money is taken by force, try refusing to pay.

Start with the Constitution and Bill of Rights, and anything the Federal government is doing that isn’t specifically called for in the founding documents is out of the budget

Close every federal agency that is not called for in the Constitution.

The EPA

The National Endowment for the Arts

The Department of Education

Department of Transportation

Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco and Firearms

Homeland Security

Transportation Safety Administration

Veto any budget that includes Bonds or Borrowing

Veto any bill that addresses any issue which is none of the federal government’s business.

Repeal all bills that are founded on Climate Change Religion

Repeal all Environmental laws and regulations. Not the federal government’s job.

Sell all national parks, nature preserves, game reserves. Not in the Constitution.

Foreign Policy

My Foreign policy will be guided by these principles

Aid our allies and adhere to our treaties

Do not aid our enemies

Get out of the UN

Anything happening in a foreign country that does not affect the US, they have to work it out for themselves.

The US is not the world’s police

International terrorism will result in bombings.

The borders will be protected.

Illegal immigrants will not be tolerated, educated, or allowed onto the welfare rolls

Children of foreign nationals who are born here are NOT citizens.

Foreign indigents who require emergency medical services will have those services paid by their home governments or families, not the American taxpayer.

Social Issues

It’s not the government’s business who anyone sleeps with or marries.

There should be no difference in taxes for married and single taxpayers (just 9% of your income)

Anyone should be able to decide who makes their end-of-life decisions

Nothing anyone says, writes, or gesticulates in sign language should land them in jail

The government will not require any particular kind of product to be purchased, rented, leased. All private financial transactions must be made freely and voluntarily.

this includes baby car seats

and health insurance

and CFL light bulbs

and low-flow toilets

The government shall not monitor anyone’s movement, communications, transactions, or associations without a properly executed warrant.

The government shall not intervene in the affairs of any major league sport.

The government shall not limit the ownership of firearms, other than keeping them from convicted felons.

If we are careful and diligent, we can turn back this oppressive ogre of government intrusion, taxation and suppression before we become the next Soviet Union. The problem I see is that we have about half the people who have given up on earning their own way and well, since the idiots are handing out money, I’m getting mine! – and the other half are just sick of being told they are evil by the socialists with both hands in their wallet.

Frankly I don’t care what thieves want. I know that there are many many voters who love to have their government rob their hardworking neighbors for them. After all, it’s far too much work to steal it themselves. I do not plan to represent those people, except to try to rehabilitate them and wean them from their debilitating dependence on socialism.

Basically, you get to keep what’s yours, and any ‘charity’ you choose to engage in will be voluntary. If you are smart and play your cards right, you’ll do well. If you have close friends and nurture your family relationships, you’ll have recourse when you fall. If there is a big, megacorporation you hate, you don’t have to do business with them. The government will not interfere with anyone who dares to compete with them.

Freedom. Liberty. The things that make the USA great.

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Julie Ransom stopped. The street had been noisy and bustling and the twilight had been bright, but she had turned the corner at Height Street leading up to her apartment, and suddenly everything had gone quiet and dark. Have I been so tired and distracted that I lost track of time? She looked around. Height is a street, but it’s small and narrow, more of a glorified alley. Most of the buildings that abut it’s sidewalks face another more major street, so it’s a brick and steel canyon with just a little microbrew bar casting light onto her cement and asphalt. In fact The Rusty Nail was the only building with an address on Height itself. A popular center for locals to drink hard, be loud, and seek a meaningless hookup.

But it wasn’t loud tonight. The lights still shone, but the music was off and there were no voices coming from the open doorway. Maybe that’s why she stopped in the first place. Only one other time had there been silence from the Nail, and it was when Bert, the friendliest bartender ever had keeled over from a heart attack during the day.

She started walking – slowly – down toward the Nail. She suddenly realized that the sound of her stilettos were making a LOT of noise. More than anything else in the alley. In fact there was no sound at all coming from the city. Not a bird, not a car horn, nor engine even. The constant din of the city just wasn’t there, like when you pull your head under the blankets.

Her breath began to shorten. What if there are terrorists or armed robbers in the bar? They could have everyone down on the floor till they clean the place out! If they are – in all this quiet they will hear me coming because of my loud shoes.

Ten feet from the door she kicked off her heels, stuffed them into her work satchel and walked in her nylons up to the opening. She reached into her purse for her phone – just in case.

Slowly, Julie peeked in around the door jamb into the main dance area of the bar. There was no one there. The lights were all on, and the register was closed, and the booze was all in its place on the shelves, there were just no people.

Maybe the robbers have them all locked in the basement. She slipped inside as silently as she could, and headed for the back room, convinced that any robber could hear the sound of her heartbeat and panicked breathing. Yet, nothing stirred, so she pressed on, ready to hit the emergency button on her phone and run for it if necessary.

The back room light was off, but the door was open so she could see the door to the basement. She crept over to it, and twisted the knob. It was unlocked.

If I call out, or open the door, any robbers will know I’m here. I can’t fight robbers on my own! Bravely, silently, she opened the door to the basement. She flipped on the light. Shaking, she started down the stairs and called out… “Hello? Anyone here?”

No one was. She breathed a sigh of relief and started back up the steps and made her way back into the main bar. For the first time she looked around. There were no beers on the tables, the chairs were down, not stacked up on the tabletops. It looked like a normal day at the bar, there were just no people – workers or patrons – there. The tables were clean, the bottles were all in order, it was odd – no, wrong – to see the place like this on a Tuesday night. The big-screens were off – thank God – they were usually always running some Euro Soccer match at full volume when she had been in before.

I should call the police. The place could get robbed all opened up like this. She pulled out her phone and thought to call 911, but there was really no emergency here, so she opened Siri and asked, “Siri, what is the police non-emergency number?”

“Using location services… The police non-emergency number is 555-5010. Would you like me to dial it for you?”

“Yes.”

Julie turned the volume down as Siri answered, partly because in her mind there might still be robbers, but also because in all the silence, it sounded like Siri was screaming. She sat in a chair and fished out her heels again as the police number rang. And rang. And rang.

What’s up with this?

Julie hung up and then just dialed 911. This time there was no ringing at all.

Tonight I watched the ancient rock opera Jesus Christ Superstar. It’s kinda campy and idealistic, but it contains powerful and direct quotes from the Word of God.

For years now, my life has been spiraling down into a very dark and hopeless place. Relationships are hard for me, work is meaningless and unfulfilling. I have let myself drift into a reef of Netflix and video games. I dislike what I have become, but I feel powerless to change it, because of the hopelessness.

So I got the BluRay of Jesus Christ Superstar, and though the entire musical is a flawed representation of the gospel, I found myself on the edge of tears, and having a visceral reaction to the scenes in the play.

The Apostles are clueless hippies, who keep chanting how everything is going to be OK, and expect Jesus to lead them on a siege to take Jerusalem back from the Romans. You have Judas who is constantly baffled by the way Jesus stays to help the low and poor, and doesn’t want to advance His own political movement. Of course the religious leaders and the Roman puppet government all trying to give Jesus any and every opportunity to speak even one word to save his own life.

Then there is Jesus. He walks the line between challenging every error people are stuck in, but in a way that shows love and understanding. He agonizes over the call to the cross, but accepts it willingly, not knowing whether His work would make any difference or not.

As I sat there and saw the Gospel – the good news – I got so very uncomfortable. You see, I have tried to add the things of this world to my life in an attempt to put off the feelings of uselessness and unhappiness that I feel every day. These things are not bad, per se, but they are not helping either.

Imagine your life as a long walk. Sometimes you walk happy and free and your eyes are on the things God has set up for you. But sometimes – like I am now – you start bolting things to yourself. Little things at first, you think that adding them to your life will enhance the beauty and joy you feel following God’s plan for you.

But before long these extra things – each enjoyable in its own way – they sum up to a great and immobilizing mass. They are too much for you to push along. Your life stops moving, and you sit there bolted to your add-on enhancements, but the basic truths of your love for God have no more place in your mind. You’ve distracted yourself. You party instead of living, rather than to celebrate living. Play becomes the new work. It’s a life of all cake and no meat.

When I was watching that BluRay, I got an image. Let’s call it a vision from God. I was sitting in a road, bolted to an immense metal box. It was like one of those big metal air conditioners you see on a office building. The word of God came like a crowbar and tried to pry the box off me. But I liked the box, and my mind and body tried to stay attached. Time and again, as the songs were sung, I felt the wrenching of that crowbar but my heart felt like it would break if I lost all that stuff.

Jesus in the garden:

Take this cup away from me, for I don’t want to taste its poison, feel it burn me.

He’s pleading with His Father to find some way to save us without the suffering of the cross. Then:

God, Thy will is hard but You hold every card
I will drink Your cup of poison
Nail me to Your cross and break me
Bleed me, beat me, kill me, take me now
Before I change my mind

And I am sitting there, thinking that He – the perfect man – accepted the cup of poison for me. Not for the me He had planned – the perfect me that might have been – but for the me that is! This wretched, distracted failure that has let all this play bog his life down beyond repair. It wrenches my soul to think that He did that for me and I am doing this in return.

It actually hurt to see the passion of Jesus play out. It challenged my heart – to the point where I felt it physically.

That is the power of the Word of God. It challenges the heart of the righteous and the sinner, and it gives hope to those in despair. I am far from fixed, ask my wife if you doubt me – but one thing I do know. There is power in those words – more than can be attributed to paper and ink.

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Dan and Sue Jenks were holding hands as they left the mall after a fun afternoon of shopping and a food court dinner. As that last “airlock” door shut behind them, they became radically reminded of the oppressive nature of June in California. Dan looked at Sue, and in perfect harmony they sang the ice cream song.

I scream
You scream
We all scream
For ice cream

With sweat on his upper lip and bags under his arm, Dan turned from the parking lot and said “ATM”. He swore he could hear his fingers sizzle as he worked the hot metallic buttons of the machine to get his cash, and then handed the crispy-fresh pile of cash to Sue for the trip to the car.

Loaded up and belted in their Toyota Camry, they rolled down the windows while they let the A/C wash over them. Sue had put the stack of 20’s in her lap so that she would not have to put them away in her purse, and get them back out in 2 minutes. Dan drove the car down Santa Ines Boulevard toward the Dairy Belle Freeze, just a few streets up. Thankfully a breeze had kicked up and was pushing the scorching hot car air out the open windows while the A/C compressor began it’s magic. Out on the road, Sue reached over to roll up her window, but as she did, she moved her lap in such a way that one of the 20’s got picked up by the breeze and sucked out the open window. She slapped her hand into her lap on the stack, but she was too late, one of them had escaped.

“Dan! Stop! I lost a… one of the 20’s flew out the window!”

But the traffic was heavy and the day was hot, and Dan decided it was too much work to go back.

“Oh well, I guess we just made someone’s day.”

—

It was many windy days later when 14 year old Cindy Jones (really Lucinda, but that was an old lady name) happened to trip into the rain gutter on Santa Ines Boulevard due to a bad dismount after twirling around the no parking any time sign pole on her way home from swimming lessons. There a lone, very crispy twenty dollar bill sat at her feet once she regained her balance. She looked up and down the boulevard, anxious to see if someone who lost it might be searching for it. Nope. She carefully picked it up and put it in her backpack full of wet swimming stuff before dancing off toward home.

Daddy said since there was no way to find whoever lost it, she could keep it. That was not what she expected to hear. Her whole week’s allowance was only five dollars, so this was the most amazing thing since her birthday.

“I’m going to save it”, she told her daddy.

That idea lasted about three hours, when she decided she wanted to adopt a kitten. The shelter had them and would adopt one for $20 (plus a pile of couch change), spayed and vaccinated. Daddy took her down on Saturday and got her a nice calico female (ex-female) kitten, which she immediately named Spike.

Daddy looked at Cindy a little funny. “That’s not a very girly name for a girl cat.”

“No, but the black stripes on her face look like spikes.”

Daddy looked. They didn’t.

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Sorry it’s been a while since my last post. I didn’t think I really had any pictures worth posting for this one. Then I figured out I could take some of my pictures in color and turn them into B&W by reducing saturation to zero! Voila! Let’s see what we’ve got…

Converse are black and white.

The moon against the night sky is black and white.

This pretty leather flower I was given at Medieval Fair is pink…but I made the picture black and white.

This landscape is so pretty in greens, I had to show you both. Scenic turnout in southern Oklahoma.

Flooding in my backyard. Again, I like the color picture better.

A caterpillar. Just because.

And, finally, a bird I saw at Medieval Fair during the Falconry show. It was flying to catch a piece of meat (yes, meat!) thrown in the air by its trainer.